Novel tackles Catholic sex-abuse scandal

February 27, 2015 1:32 PM

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In a telling anecdote that arrives in the first pages of A History of Loneliness, John Boyne's corrosive new novel about the sexual-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Ireland, Father Odran Yates recalls a startling change in his nephew, Aidan, in his teens.

Once cheerful and extroverted, Aidan inexplicably becomes distant and angry. Later, at a family gathering, a semi-drunk Aidan confronts his priestly uncle and demands, mysteriously, "Do you never wish you could go back and live it all over again? Do everything differently? Be a normal man instead of...